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Mayor John Tory’s executive is too much of an echo chamber

People who live in Toronto’s downtown wards already know they’re not well loved by Premier Doug Ford, who slashed the entire city council just to prevent a couple more progressive voices from getting elected.

Now it’s clear Mayor John Tory is also keen to limit those voices while amplifying the ones in the suburban, more right-leaning wards of the city. How else to explain his new executive committee?

Mayor John Tory poses with city councillors for a group portrait at Toronto city hall. (Andrew Francis Wallace / Toronto Star)

When highlighted on a ward map, all but one of the new members of Toronto’s most powerful committee come from well outside the central core.

Given the provincial move to reduce Toronto council to just 25 wards, the seven councillors who join Tory on his executive committee are more powerful than ever. They set the city’s strategic direction and determine council’s priorities.

So it’s unfortunate that Davenport’s Ana Bailão — who is also chair of the planning and housing committee — is the only councillor on the executive from a central city ward.

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The rest include returning speaker Frances Nunziata, budget chief Gary Crawford and deputy mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong, and committee chairs Michael Thompson, James Pasternak and Paul Ainslie, who all ran committees last time and represent suburban wards.

Tory’s decision to rely so heavily on the same suburban allies who helped him last term is certainly understandable given his desire to push through the agenda he was elected on.

But, both during and after the election, Tory spoke strongly about the need to better knit the city together, and that too is something he must deliver on.

It won’t be easy. This council is much smaller but it’s as divided as before, with the suburban-downtown split that remains an impediment to city progress 20 years after the province forced amalgamation on Toronto and the surrounding cities.

In his inaugural address to city council last week, Tory reiterated his promise to speak and act for the whole city. He said: “We don’t have to divide and polarize here.”

He’s right about that. It’s too bad those fine words did not extend to actions this week when it came to picking the executive, which forms the inner circle of power.

Also unfortunate — and particularly now that the premier’s political interference is bringing the OPP into disrepute — is the decision to include councillor Michael Ford, his nephew, on the Toronto Police Services Board. And it’s surely a head-scratcher why Stephen Holyday, one of the most vocal supporters of gutting council mid-election, will now head up efforts to find a way to restructure city governance.

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Thankfully, Tory did put a few progressive councillors in key positions.

Councillor Joe Cressy will represent the city on the Waterfront Toronto board at a particularly challenging time for the city-provincial-federal agency that is overseeing redevelopment of the Port Lands and currently negotiating with Sidewalk Labs on a proposed high-tech neighbourhood.

And Paula Fletcher will sit on the CreateTO board, the city’s real estate agency tasked with managing and developing Toronto’s land holdings, making it a key player in Tory’s pledge to create 40,000 new affordable housing units over 12 years.

Cressy and Fletcher are both well-suited to advancing these critical waterfront and affordable housing files. Perhaps even more importantly, they’ll be well-placed to help defend the city’s interests against any provincial moves to undermine the waterfront corporation or overrule the city on development decisions.

It’s also good to see Shelley Carroll, an experienced, progressive voice, named to the budget committee, economic and community development committee and the TTC board.

Those appointments and a few others will certainly help ensure that a broader range of city voices is heard. But, overall, the executive members and committee chairs are the ones with the most power on council and, for those, Tory has picked people he’s judged the least likely to challenge him.

That will make for easier governance, certainly. But not necessarily a better and bolder city.

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